Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

Aion is hardly an 800lb gorilla and you know it.

You asked me who the competition was, that was taking WoW's (slightly) decreasing share of the market. I pointed out about four million subscribers worth of new games, from key markets, all to explain a measly 800,000 fall in WoW's player base. You tell me this isn't enough, it's no "800lb gorilla". Is there any satisfying this argument? Because if the *second largest MMO ever* is not enough, I don't know what even could be. Aion is huge, by any standard except World of Warcraft itself.

Likewise, WoW lost 800k subscribers, that doesn't account for the 200k difference between it and Rift.

Because either 100% of WoW players went to Rift, or none of them did? Could it not be that Aion and Rift each took a chunk? Or that some left for other games, some left the market, and yet others started playing for the first time? The numbers don't have to equal each other perfectly to matter.

Likewise, Rift has lost subscribers, so that shows even more that Blizzard hasn't lost that many to other MMOs. Something else is making WoW lose subscribers, and it isn't competing MMOs on the market at this time.

The whole market is down maybe 1 million. If 100% of those are from WoW, then yes, that explains it. I don't think it is plausible that this is the case - that would mean that no other game is losing players, period, including Aion, including Rift, and they clearly are.

Regardless, the basic content of your argument is obviously contradicted by the data. This is not an unprecedented decline in subscribers, either in percentages or absolute terms. However, I am rapidly coming to the opinion that you are not interested in the data, but merely adapting your argument to whatever will support your prior idea: that the B team wrecked WoW.

-Jester

Aion has been around for longer than WoW's decline. WoW was still on a slight increase when Aion came into the picture. And if anything, Aion more likely has affected FF12 and 14 more than WoW where those two (FF12 and 14) had a primarily Asian subscriber base. Also, did you bother to note that Aion has lost over 1 million subs since it's peak in late 2009/early 2010?

Likewise, Rift has been losing subscribers as well, not gaining them. They had an initial jump and now, like WoW, they're losing subscribers.

I think you're not looking at the data in the proper light. You throw out the data points, then failed to properly analyze those data points trying to point that when various MMOs lost people, it was after their peak by more than two years. There's a huge difference in losing 30% two years after you peak because another MMO has entered the market that has pulled people away with definite game play that was better at the time and losing 8% of your subscribers in 6 months after a new expansion with no real competition.

Next week, we'll get to see the 3rd quarter results for Activision-Blizzard and we'll see what the subscriber loss looks like then (but looking at how Blizzard was reacting during Blizzcon, it's going to be bad).